Inefficiency Lasts as Long as You Let It

"Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected." ~Steve Jobs

"You only get what you tolerate. It's time to raise your standards." ~Tony Robbins

Lots of leaders bemoan the lackluster results they are receiving. They think their employees disengaged and unmotivated, they don’t feel they have all of the resources necessary to succeed, and they don’t think they are receiving enough direction from above. But don’t all leaders have a HUGE amount of control over all of these things? Don’t cede your control over you operation to fate. Stop tolerating inefficiency and lackluster results. If you aren’t getting what you want out of your team, then you need to set the bar higher for both them AND you and enforce it. You wouldn’t tolerate someone slapping another employee, but you might tolerate them doing the bare minimum. Well, what if you didn’t.

What if you raised expectations? We have almost all had that boss that came to us on a regular basis with seemingly impossible tasks. What happened? Most of us found a way and miraculously made it happen. Now I’m not recommending setting wholly unreasonable expectations, but you know what your people are really capable of, and I’d bet that it is more than what they may be giving now. It is also important that you not press the “panic button” or start micromanaging your team as you try to get the most out of them. But it may be worthwhile to put some more intensity behind your efforts.

One of my favorite saying in both my personal life and professional life is, “When you have no choice, you have no choice.” What this means for me is that the path forward is often easier when we have no choice, there’s no whining that it is difficult, there’s no need to try to find a shortcut. It just is what it is and we better get busy dealing with it.

So make your expectations simple, clear, and high. Oftentimes the reason we aren’t getting the results we want from our team isn’t their fault, it’s actually ours.

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